1. Technical Field
Embodiments of the inventive concept relate to a forensic system, method, and program, and in particular, to a forensic system, method, and program for collecting digital document information relating to litigation.
2. Background Art
Conventionally, when a crime or a legal conflict relating to a computer such as unauthorized access or leakage of confidential information or other so-called “forensic” events occur, a means or a technique for collecting and analyzing devices, data, or electronic records required for investigation into the cause or to otherwise clarify legal evidences thereof have been proposed.
Particularly, in civil litigation in United State of America, since such a procedure as eDiscovery is required, both a plaintiff and a defendant involved in the litigation must submit all related digital information as evidences. They also need to submit digital information recorded in computers and/or servers as evidentiary material as well.
Due to the rapid development and spreading of information technologies, most information that is being produced in today's world is being produced or otherwise replicated by computers, such that massive amounts of digital information are generated, even within the same company.
Therefore, in the preparatory work of gathering evidentiary material for submission to a court of law or other party, mistakes can occur where even confidential digital information, which is not necessarily related with the litigation, is nevertheless inadvertently submitted together with the evidentiary materials, which can cause legal waiver issues and other problems.
In recent years, techniques related to forensic systems have been proposed in JP-A-2006-178521 and JP-A-2007-148731. JP-A-2006-178521 discloses a forensic system where identification of a wrongdoer can be performed efficiently by a method which allows testimony to evidentiary conservation, whereby reliability of the identification is robust against human factors.
JP-A-2007-148731 discloses a forensic system where a forensic related system performs an ex-post handling, such as identification of a criminal, in connection with a legal action or determination such as an amount of loss compensation in an information damage insurance system, which pays insurance coverage due to leakage of personal information.
However, the forensic systems of JP-A-2006-17852 and JP-A-2007-148731 eventually collect an enormous amount of digital document information relating to users who might have used the computers or the servers.
Under such a situation that an operator cannot accurately grasp which user utilized (e.g., produced, edited, or browsed) the digital document information, determining whether or not each of the collected digital document information is valid as evidentiary material for litigation purposes is problematic because it is labor and cost intensive.
In view of these circumstances, it would be desirable to provide a forensic system, method, and program that can accurately determine and/or set which user digital document information is related to the litigation after the digital document information is collected.